Macro UPDATE for Hunter's Mark + Serpent Sting?

Post by Fiammata

Hi! I used to use this before 5.0 made it obsolete:

/cast Hunter's Mark/cast Serpent Sting

It would cast Hunter's Mark, or it would cast Serpent's Sting, and if you clicked it fast enough you could get the 2nd while the 1st was on cooldown and therefore get rid of 1 modifier. I didn't design it but thought it was neat as I only have 3 buttons on my mouse. It was glitchy but worked most of the time. With 5.0 it became purely Hunter's Mark, even if I swap the 2, because that one's instant. If I put a ; after the first line it becomes that one (whichever is there) and the other is never cast. I didn't need it so much, so I split the 2 into different modifiers and called it a day.

But with a recent interest in PvP I find I'd like to have a little more control over my pet. Sure, I can add /petattack and /petassist to either hotkey, but I'm more concerned about special abilities like Last Stand and Bullheaded. I tried adding that to the keyboard somewhere but found it too awkward, and currently have it on the ctrl: modifier for my mouse's middle button. Middle Button is my character's healing abilities, so it made sense to put a Pet-Heal-type-help there, but I'll soon be switching to Herbalism and would love to put herb's Haste there instead. The alt: modifier is awkward for me on the mouse, but I do use it for various keyboard buttons, such as pet's summoning and basic healing. If only tab or caps lock could be a modifier...

So, any updates to this old macro? :)

Post by Jurasco

Looking at those abilities both trigger the GCD, so it wont work in and of itself.

A possible solution if you would prefer not to use modifiers is a cast sequence macro. I do not recomend this though. The macro would look like this:

#show/castsequence Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting

Problems with castsequence macros is that they can really cause you to lose control if your not careful.

1) Pressing a castsequence macro while the GCD is triggered will cause it to move to the next spell in sequence. So basically if you press the button once, and then again while the GCD is activated, the macro will still assume you 'casted' the spell and move on to the next spell or reset to the beginning.

2) This will waste GCD's. Leaving the macro as it is above will force you to cast hunters mark each time before it will let you cast Serpent sting.

3) The macro above as written will move between the two spells with each key press, never resetting.

A slightly longer version of the macro may work for you. But still I don't recommend this for PvP unless you have the control needed not to hit it during a GCD.

This still leaves problem #1 above, it sort of helps #2 by doing serpent sting with the shift mod. #3 is fixed with the reset modifier, this can be adjusted and is the number of seconds before the macro resets to hunters mark after you press it the first time.

Hope this helps, but someone else may have a better solution than that.

Post by Jurasco

Actually overall I think your best choice would be the following macro.

#show/cast Serpent Sting/cast Hunter's Mark

Use shift the first time you press it to cast Hunters mark, 5 min duration should make recasting it less common that the short duration of Serpent Sting.

Shift + Press = Hunter's MarkPress = Serpent Sting

Post by Fiammata

I tried adding to the Hunter's Mark line, but it doesn't recognize the 'if' modifier. I remember reading once about an all-in-one for druids using if, something about if water then aquatic form, if outside travel form, if indoors cat. My forms are tied into the keyboard instead of the mouse, so reducing modifiers isn't such a necessity there, and I never took that on.

What you've got is pretty much what I'm using, except I split it up into 3 different icons and used the ingame interface to give them modifiers. I have Concussive Shot for Right-Button nomod, Serpent Sting for shift, and Hunter's Mark for ctrl. That's pretty much my all-in-a-row when I meet something, so any reduction in modifiers (it's just repetition anyway) would be great. It'd give 1 more mouse-slot for that pet ability.

Currently for Left-Click I have Arcane Shot, Kill Command (shift), and Scatter Shot (ctrl).

For Middle-Click (my heal-anything button for healing classes, including that awkward alt for when I can sit still!) I have Steady Shot, Intimidation (shift), and an Anti-Rogue (ctrl) macro I picked up somewhere. The Anti-Rogue doesn't really seem to work (I still get sapped running out of respawn), but I'm keeping it there in case a working one is found.

I suppose I could replace the Intimidation hotkey with the pet ability on one action bar, keeping all other keys the same? That's a useless ability in PvP after all, but it seems a bit wasteful to use up a whole action bar on this... ah, well.

Post by Nooska

The easiest (and therefore, for most, best) solution is to just have Serpent Sting on it, and then utilize Charred Glyph untill 5.2 (where the glyph goes baseline)

Post by Jurasco

The easiest (and therefore, for most, best) solution is to just have Serpent Sting on it, and then utilize Charred Glyph untill 5.2 (where the glyph goes baseline)

This beats my suggestion lol

Post by Fiammata

Sorry but I'm small-twink and therefore have no glyphs. xD I'll attempt this:

/castsequence Hunter's Mark, Serpent Sting

today, and let ya know how it goes.

Post by Fiammata

I tried it in an intance just now, and it appears to somewhat randomly choose which ability of the 2 to use, even often does Hunter's Mark twice before doing Serpent's Sting, and occasionally does Serpent's Sting before Hunter's mark (which would be preferred). But the cooldown is short, so I just spam it until they're both up. Slightly buggy, but I'm not picky! There is now 1 extra mouse-slot for a pet-boost, THX! :D

If anyone knows an if-type modifier to use for this, I'd love to try that as well. Druids have one for if:place then:form. Advanced hunters use one for pets as in, if-certain-pet, then-certain-ability, but I've been quite happy with the idea of just putting each pet's favored ability in the 1st slot on their toolbar and then using the ingame interface to choose a key for that. What I'd like is something that means: if Hunter's Mark is already there, use Serpent's Sting. If it is not, use Hunter's Mark.

If a macro like this does not exist then I am happy with this buggy one and will continue to use it. :)

Again, to all, thanks!

Post by Nooska

Conditional macros are generally not possible, the few conditionals that work ar ones that check if something is alive (target modifier), if you are in a specific stance (stance, form, aspect and seal for paladins I would guess), and whether you can do what you want to do in the location you are (like flyable), as well as checking whether you are mounted, swimming and stuff like that.

You say you are a low-level character, what level are you exactly (first glyph spots open at 15 and MfD glyph "only" requires 25)?

Oh and the castsequence will cast whichever of the 2 abilities it didn't cast lasttime, but as was noted earlier, it will advance if you hit it while you are still in the GCD, so if you hit it too fast it skips the next one.

Post by Zakkhar

Oh and the castsequence will cast whichever of the 2 abilities it didn't cast lasttime, but as was noted earlier, it will advance if you hit it while you are still in the GCD, so if you hit it too fast it skips the next one.

You can however force castsequence to cast the second stuff only when really needed (in straight sequence).

/castsequence reset=2 Serpent Sting, Hunter's Mark

It will prio the first ability unless pressed twice in a rapid succesion.

Conditional macros are generally not possible, the few conditionals that work ar ones that check if something is alive (target modifier), if you are in a specific stance (stance, form, aspect and seal for paladins I would guess), and whether you can do what you want to do in the location you are (like flyable), as well as checking whether you are mounted, swimming and stuff like that.

You can also check which kinda group you are in, what pet you have and whether something is allied or hostile.

Post by Fiammata

It will prio the first ability unless pressed twice in a rapid succesion.

Yes! OmG, yes! I just tried this! THANK YOU!

*is quite a happy huntard*

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